Chicken coop questions

[TnAndy]

The feathers are where I see the most hassle.

You're correct. Takes me about 20 minutes per bird (clearly I'm not a pro). So this past year, I built a "whiz-bang" plucker, and now 1 minute after you drop a scalded bird in it, you have a completely naked chicken ! We do 25-30 Cornish X, raising to about 7-8lbs (about 8 weeks).

Here is the chicken tractor design I use....5x10. Holds 12-15 birds from age 3-4wks (when they are pretty much fully feathered, and depending on outside temps) to finish. We move them daily, the length of the pen.

 

[TnAndy]

We sell at basically $3/lb finish-processed. Costs us about $7 per bird between buying each chick, feed, materials, processing, fuel used, etc. So, it's not super profitable, but we sell enough to pay for all of our own meat, and the materials/fuel.

So it costs $7 for 2 lbs of breast meat, two legs, two thighs, two wings. We keep the back on the carcass and boil down all the carcass into canned stock. It allows us to have an abundance of natural, organic chicken stock on hand, and we use it in alot of our cooking. Very good for you.

Exactly the same here. Whether you save money or not, you're getting a FAR superior meat raising them on pasture as well as feed. Go to a commercial broiler operation (or cattle feed lot, or hog operation) sometime, and you'll understand price is not the only consideration.

 

[TSO]

Nice coop, but it's overkill for meat birds. If you were pasturing egg birds and wanted to keep them contrasted, that would be a nice design as long as you incorporated a roost and nesting boxes.